Paula Patton fizzes and flounces through
Baggage Claim, a romantic comedy about a flight attendant who gives herself “30 days and
30 thousand miles” to find some man to “put a ring on it” before her sister’s wedding.

No gesture is too big, no half-hearted punch line too weak to sell with some wide-eyed bit of
mugging from the star of
Jumping the Broom. An actress who showed blessed restraint in films such as Precious
practically gives herself a hernia in this exercise. Patton plays Montana, doomed to make poor
choices in men, so upset when her younger sister (Lauren London) announces her engagement that she
resolves to have a wed-able date for that sister’s nuptials.

Her mother (Jenifer Lewis) taught her “You’re not a lady until you’re married.” So Montana’s
obligatory gay flight attendant pal (Adam Brody) and curvaceous, oversexed flight attendant BFF
(Jill Scott) use their professional connections to hurl Montana in the path of her most promising
(and successful) exes by tracking their every airline ticket. Yeah, it’s illegal and they know it,
but she’s worth it.

All the while, she’s not quite grasping that the fellow she grew up with and now lives right
across the hall from (Derek Luke) is her Forever Man.

The mechanics of getting Montana on the flights is the quickest and funniest part of the
movie, with all the conference-call plotting with her pals and the tricks her airport screener
friend Cedric (Crockett) plays to get her through line quickly, or stall others who need to be held
up.

“I have NO life,” Cedric announces as he “wands” another passenger, “which gives me ALL day
to ruin YOURS.”

Writer-director David E. Talbert, in adapting his own book, feels free to put Patton in the
same guise – playing 10 years below her age, needy and marriage-obsessed – that she wore in Jumping
the Broom. Scene after scene will have you scratching your head, wondering if you’ve seen this
movie before. Talbert borrows freely and often in concocting this thinly amusing bit of recycling.

The supporting players score the occasional laugh, but hiring the tiresome Lewis to play
another brassy mom and making the rest of the cast play cliches and “types” give this romantic
comedy too much baggage to overcome.